Holiday Bootcamp Lesson 5- Unlock Keywords

You’ve spent hours and hours making your items, photographing them beautifully and listing them in your Etsy shop. But this is all completely pointless if no-one can actually find them! Now is the perfect time before the Christmas rush to really make sure your Etsy shop is being found in the right searches. If you invest a bit of time in working on your tags and titles then you will definitely see improvements in views and hopefully get lots of sales this holiday season too!
It’s not as complicated as it sounds! Here’s some top tips we have learnt along the way:

-Start off with one item and brainstorm ideas for keywords and phrases. What is it? What is it specifically? What type? What is unique about it? What colour is it? Who is it for? What is it made of? What size is it? What style is it? Where would you use it? Anything that you think is relevant!

-An extremely handy tool is that little search box at the top of Etsy. If you start typing in a description of an item then a little drop down menu appears. This drop down menu is the most searched for words and phrases linked to what you were typing. For example if you start typing “Christmas Ornament” before you’ve even finished it will tell you the most searched for terms…clever! Use this tool to make different experiments with your own item descriptions.

-Titles.

I think this is where a lot of people make mistakes. There’s no point in calling your listing “Fluffy the Cat Picture” because no-one will ever find it! You need to get your most important phrases at the beginning of the title. For example this hello DODO listing for a Stegosaurus relief print, the title is: “Dinosaur Print, Kids Wall Art, Handprinted Stegosaurus Print, Boys Bedroom Print, Kids Room Decor, Green Dinosaur, Relief Print, Nursery Art”

It might not look particularly pretty but these are all phrases which are being searched for and we can see this by keeping an eye on our stats. You want to find a good balance between getting key phrases in there but still making it clear for the customer what they’re looking at. Check out what your competitors are doing too!

-Stats!

These are an incredible tool to an Etsy seller. Check them daily to see which search terms people are using to find your shop or to see if particular phrases don’t seem to be working.

-Tags!

Remember those key phrases you used in your title? Match your tags to them and you will appear higher in searches. Don’t just use singular words, use phrases, for example “funny Christmas cards” or “laser cut necklace”. Use all 13 tags! Each one is a potential door in to your shop.

-Once you’ve made these adjustments to your shop you can search Etsy yourself and see where your products come up in searches! But remember that Etsy takes a little while to update so you won’t see the changes you make instantly working.

– Customers search in a different way during the Christmas season, are there relevant terms you could use? Think about it…who are they buying for? Has it changed? Are your items related to any seasonal trends? Try dropping some of your weaker tags to include some Christmassy ones. Keep an eye on your stats to see if they’re working!

-Lastly, if you sell lots of similar items in your shop then don’t just use the same titles and tags for all of them. Try using a more diverse range of keywords and you will bring a larger variety of buyers in to your shop through searches. Again, keep an eye on your tags to see what’s working!
Have fun experimenting!